Couple of missing billboard functions.
Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 12:53 pm
Two obvious functions I wanted from billboards that seem to be missing.
First up, there's no pBillboardset->SetMaterial(pMaterial) function. Minor issue, I used SetMaterialName instead, but SetMaterial would have been handier.
Secondly, there's pBillboard->setRotation(Radian) but no pBillboard->setFlip(U_andor_V). No way around this one that I can see, and from an art point of view flips are just as important as rotations. Lack of flips has halved the variation I can get from my animated explosion texture.
One other thing, currently rotation rotates UVs, so unless you're doing 90 degree rotations you have leave lots of headroom around your particles, virtually halving their resolution, or else the corners will rotate onto parts of the texture they shouldn't touch, causing visual glitches. I don't know if it's possible, but it'd be neat if there were a second rotation method that left the UVs intact and rotated the billboard vertices instead. I expect there'd be a speed penalty, but if it wasn't too high I'd be willing to pay it in some circumstances (such as with my explosion animation.)
I'll survive without these, but thought I'd mention them.
First up, there's no pBillboardset->SetMaterial(pMaterial) function. Minor issue, I used SetMaterialName instead, but SetMaterial would have been handier.
Secondly, there's pBillboard->setRotation(Radian) but no pBillboard->setFlip(U_andor_V). No way around this one that I can see, and from an art point of view flips are just as important as rotations. Lack of flips has halved the variation I can get from my animated explosion texture.
One other thing, currently rotation rotates UVs, so unless you're doing 90 degree rotations you have leave lots of headroom around your particles, virtually halving their resolution, or else the corners will rotate onto parts of the texture they shouldn't touch, causing visual glitches. I don't know if it's possible, but it'd be neat if there were a second rotation method that left the UVs intact and rotated the billboard vertices instead. I expect there'd be a speed penalty, but if it wasn't too high I'd be willing to pay it in some circumstances (such as with my explosion animation.)
I'll survive without these, but thought I'd mention them.